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Friday

Ryan Coogler at the Zurich Film Festival, 2013

Ryan Coogler talks about his Sundance-winning film Fruitvale Station: a dramatic reconstruction of the last day of Oscar Grant, a young, unarmed black man killed by police in the early hours of New Year's Day, 2009

How
common is what happened to Oscar Grant?

“I
don't have statistics for that. But I know that the idea of being
shot by a police officer while you're unarmed is an issue that is
much more prevalent in black males than it is in anybody else. It is
something that does happen, and happens all over the country. The
biggest fact, and it is something I have statistics for, is that the
most likely cause of death for African-American males from age 15 to
35 is homicide, and primarily gun violence. Whether that's another
black male that's killing or a police officer that's killing them,
that's the way they're most likely to die.”

Recently,
of course, there was the Zimmerman case. Is the law is too soft on
perpetrators?

“I
think this is the result of a lot of problems. There's not just
problems in the justice system. There's issues in society that mean
these lives are at threat in so many ways and in some ways can be
considered to be expendable. I'm in no way, shape or form an expert
on those things. I'm a 27-year-old film-maker. But I know enough
about these things to know it's a human rights issue. It's an issue
that is not specific to any one area. These are problems that exist
worldwide and they manifest themselves differently in different
cultures. Looking at the States we're looking at African-Americans,
males, and we're losing our lives very often at early ages, very
often through violent means or through incarceration. These are
issues that are multifaceted.”

How
accurate is the re-telling of Oscar's last day and how much artistic
license did you take?

“When
I started, the script was only from legal documents, from publicly
available documents, things people, different witnesses, said in the
trial, from all sides. And then from there I got access to the
family. I was able to do interviews and talk to them about things
that Oscar told them in the time they spent with him. Once I had done
all of that, there was a small gap in the day, which is time Oscar
spent by himself, and there I took some dramatic license with a
certain scene I added with the dog. There was also a character that
came from combining two separate real characters. Aside from those
things, it was all real.”

Did
you get all the help you wanted from Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART) officials or was it difficult
getting permission to shoot on the system?

“We
got a lot of help from the BART, which was ironic. I didn't expect that.
I think it helped that the film was about Oscar and not about the
case. Not just about the shooting. The shooting is a very small part
of the film. Even though it has a major impact, no more than 15
minutes is dealing with that in a film that's an hour and a half. I
think they were also excited about the fact it was going to be made
in the Bay area; that it was somebody from the Bay area who's not
pointing the finger at anything. It's more about this guy's life and
the people he was close to.”

So
they were sympathetic to the project?

“Well
they were very interested in not being a hindrance to the film being
made. They actually wanted to offer, like, an olive branch to the
community. That is both to the film-making community and to the Bay
area community at large. It was helpful that the General Manager that
was there when Oscar was killed is not there any more. There's a new
Police Chief. So they were very open to supporting the film.”

How
did Oscar's family react to seeing the film?

“They
came to the world premiere and that was the first time they had seen
anything or read anything. I was nervous when they watched it and
more than anything hoping that I got them right. You never know how
somebody's going to view seeing themselves. And obviously it was
tough for them because they were seeing things that not all of them
knew about Oscar. Some stuff in the film, Oscar's mum didn't know.
His family didn't know he was still dealing. So that part was very
tough, obviously. And obviously it was very tough to relive that day
for them, because it was not that long ago that it happened. But they
were very positive and said very kind things about the film and about
the performances in the film.”

What
impact did this case have in America?

“Man,
America's a very interesting country. It took me leaving the States
to realise how different home was from other places. You got to
realise when you talk about America that, spatially, it's a massive
country. It's huge. So when you ask about the impact that this case
had on the country it's kind of interesting how that works. It didn't
get the national continuous coverage that other cases might have
received. What did make it interesting was that the internet played a
huge role in it.”

People
filmed Oscar's killing on phones, right?

“Yeah,
and you can still see what happened to Oscar on Youtube to this day,
from several different angles."

So
what was the effect if not nationally then locally?

“It
kind of brought Bay area to its knees. It was right there in our
community, man. It was something that everybody was aware of.
Everybody talked about. People were in the streets marching and
protesting in Oakland. And anywhere people caught the BART, they knew
about this case. And the BART kind of runs like a vein throughout the
Bay area, from the East Bay to San Francisco, so people knew about
this. It happened right there.”

What
about elsewhere?

“Outside
of the Bay area, not many people knew. People who were tuned into
these kind of things knew. There was a high awareness of it in New
York, because in New York there's similar things like that and
there's kind of a media time-line between New York and the Bay area.
LA eventually became familiarised with what it was because the case
itself got moved to Los Angeles, through a motion by the defence to
take it somewhere people were less familiar with the case. So the
case was decided by a Los Angeles jury that was actually absent with
African-Americans.”

There
seem to be more movies being made about black issues that aren't just
about, say, gang culture. We have had your film, The Butler, 12 Years
a Slave. Is it getting easier to make these kinds of films?

“Mm,
I'm trying to think of the best way to say this. A dream of mine is
to see media production, the people who are producing it, look like
the people who are consuming it. And for a long time in the States
that hasn't been the case. The people who are behind the scenes
making media – and I mean artistic-oriented media as well as media
produced for commercial purposes - they've been kind of homogeneous.
They've looked the same way. No matter what the subject matter was
about, it was coming from this certain perspective. So I'd like to
see the day when there are more female filmmakers. More
African-American filmmakers. More Asian filmmakers. More
Hispanic-American filmmakers. I would love to see that day because
there are people like that. There are stories like that that need to
be told and I think art would be better for it. I think people
consuming it would be better for it and more knowledgeable.”

So
are things changing?

"I
think what happened in this last year, not just on the scale of these
films that are getting distribution, but also in the independent
landscape, having gone to Sundance and to these other film festivals
I met some of these other filmmakers that are coming up. Incredibly
talented female filmmakers. Incredibly talented Asian-American
filmmakers. Destin Crettin made this film Short Term 12 which
is exceptional. Meeting these people, it brings huge excitement to me
as somebody who watches film to see stuff from these perspectives,
and to see a diversity of perspectives that are behind the camera.
And in terms of the timing, I'm not sure why all these films are
coming out at the same time. I think if anything it's coincidence.”

Money
is the ultimate deciding factor?

“This
is the thing. When it comes to money, film is the most expensive art
form to make. Maybe building buildings, architecture, is something
that's close to how expensive it is to make cinema. But cinema isn't
painting, it's not music, it's something that takes a lot of money to
do. And they weigh the risk and if something is proven not to make
its money back, then people aren't going to put money into it. So my
hope is that people see that these films are worth putting money
into. That it's worth supporting these filmmakers that come from
different backgrounds and different perspectives. And I hope it
starts a trend of that direction.”

At
the moment these films are all being made independently, aren't they?
The Butler was an independent film. So it's not cracking the system,
as it were.

“I
think it's actually a good thing that these films were made
independently. I know 12
Years was. I know our
film was. We'd have had a tough time getting our film made with a
studio.”

Do
you think the existence of these films suggests that the issue of
race in America still isn't being dealt with properly?

“Oh
man, it's so complex. It's a complex situation. And it's a situation
that's existed since the country's been. African-Americans have been
there since the beginning of the country, so it's a situation with a
long history.”

These
seem to come in waves so that's why I'm asking.

“I
think it will take a lot to resolve these issues. The issues keep
changing. They keep morphing. You look back to what African-Americans
were dealing with 50 years ago and it's very different from what
we're dealing with right now. It takes on different characteristics.
Now you have an African-American president and we still have young
African-American men being killed in the streets, and life goes on.
It's this huge complex thing to deal with and this huge complex thing
to look at and it's difficult to point at what the solution is. And
nobody wants to point the finger at themselves in the situation.
Nobody involved does. Everybody wants to point the finger away. So
it's something that as a country we've got to deal with, and as a
people more than anything.”

"Your piece is one of the most comprehensive, eloquent, and powerful discussions of the film I have read." Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing

"Stephen, this is a fabulous piece; you did a superlative job in communicating the film and its essence." Erik Greenberg Anjou, director of Deli Man

"I have to thank you. It's a very good [Mein Kampf] article, which you have written; it reflects very sharply and especially fairly the various positions." Dr. Christian Hartmann, Institute of Contemporary History Munich